Regulators? Or gamekeepers wanting to become well-paid poachers?

Weekend blog

Here’s a story I don’think any of our mainstream media will, be covering.

Have you ever wondered why our supposed regulators – Ofwat, Ofgem and Ofcom – seem to be so utterly useless? Well perhaps you need to look no further than the regulators’ employees’ bank accounts. I’m sure employees of regulators like Ofwat, Ofgem and Ofcom get very nice civil-service-style salaries and gold-plated pensions. But they can earn much more by moving to the companies they are supposed to regulate. Basically, they can move from being reasonably-paid gamekeepers to being much more highly-paid poachers. And if you’re an employee of a regulator hoping to get a well-paid job in one of the companies you’re supposed to be regulating, you’re not going to make yourself unpopular with your targetted future employer by regulating too aggressively.

It might seem odd to an ignorant outsider like myself that none of our regulators collect (or admit to collecting?) figures on how many of their employees defect – join the companies they used to regulate. After all, if say about 1% of a regulator’s employees leave to take up much more lucrative jobs with the companies that they were supposed to regulate, that shouldn’t be a problem. But if the figure is say 10% or even more, then clearly management at the regulators have a serious issue they need to address. Therefore, it could appear more than astonishing that regulators don’t collect (or claim to not collect?) this information.

But we do know that 6 of 9 major water and sewerage companies in England have hired former Ofwat directors of corporate strategy or heads of regulation for top roles.

There are, of course, no figures for how many Ofgem employees have joined electricity companies nor of how many Ofcom employees have joined communications and media organisations. But knowing human nature, I think we can guess that quite a few have left the supposed ‘regulators’ in order to help regulated companies outwit the regulators.

And finally we have the two main financial regulators – the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) and the PRA (Prudential Regulation Authority). Again, no figures are available of how many financial regulators have left to get much more lucrative jobs in banking and investment companies. I did find that around 1,000 employees left the FCA in the years 2020 to 2022. I will leave it up to your imagination to guess where these around 1,000 financially-qualified individuals went to work after leaving the FCA.

So, if you’ve ever wondered why our supposed ‘regulators’ appear to be incapable of regulating anything, perhaps you need to look no further than reasonably-paid gamekeepers wanting to become extremely well-paid poachers?